LONGARM
By Tabor Evans Copyright 1978
One gray Monday morning it was trying to rain in Denver. A herd of wet Texas clouds had followed the Goodnight Trail north, tripped on the Arkansas Divide, and settled down to sweat itself away in the thin atmosphere of the mile-high capital of Colorado.
In the Union Yards a Burlington locomotive sobbed a long, lonesome whistle as Longarm awoke in his furnished room a quarter of a mile away.
For perhaps a full minute, Longarm stared up from the sagging brass stead at the smoke-begrimed plaster. Then he threw the cover off and swung bare feet to the threadbare gray carpet and rose, or, rather, loomed in the semidarkness of the little corner room. Longarm knew he was tall. He knew he moved well. He didn’t understand the effect his catlike motions had on others. His friends joshed about a man his size “spooking livestock and making most men thoughtful with them sudden moves of his.” But Longarm only thought it natural to get from where he’d been to where he was going by the most direct route. He was not a man who did things by halves. A man was either sleeping or a man was up, and right now he was up.
Longarm slid over to the dressing table and stared soberly at his reflection in the tarnished mirror. The naked figure staring back was that of a lean, muscular giant with the body of a young athlete and a lived-in face. Longarm was still on the comfortable side of forty, but the raw sun and cutting winds he’d ridden through coming west as a boy from West-by-Virginia had cured his rawboned features as saddle-leather brown as an Indian’s. Only the gunmetal blue of his wide-set eyes, and the tobacco-leaf color of his close-cropped hair and longhorn moustache gave evidence of Angloon birth. The stubble on his lantern jaw was too heavy for an Indian, too. Longarm ran a thumbnail along the angle of his jaw and decided he had time to stop for a professional shave on his way to the office. He was an early riser and the Federal Courthouse wouldn’t open until eight.
He rummaged through the clutter atop the dresser and swore when he remembered he was out of soap. Longarm was a reasonably clean guy who took a bath once a week whether he needed it or not, but the sociable weekend activities along Larimer Street’s Saloon Row had left him feeling filthy and his mouth tasted like the bottom of a birdcage. He picked up a half-filled bottle of Maryland rye and pulled the cork with his big ivory-colored teeth. Then he took a healthy slug, swished it around and between his fuzzy teeth and cotton tongue, and let it go down. That took care of dental hygiene this morning.
He poured tepid water from a pitcher into a cracked china basin on a nearby stand. Then he spiked the water with some more rye. He dipped a stringy washrag in the mixture and rubbed himself down from hairline to shins, hoping the alcohol would cut the grease enough to matter. The cold whore-bath stung the last cobwebs from his sleep-drugged mind and he felt ready to face another week working for Uncle Sam.
That is, he was ready, but willing was another matter. The new regulations of President Hayes’s Reform Administration were getting tedious as hell, and lately, Longarm had been thinking about turning in his badge.
He scowled at himself in the mirror as he put on a fresh flannel shirt of gunmetal gray and fumbled with the foolish-looking shoestring tie they had said he had to wear, these days. Back when U.S. Grant had been in the catbird seat, the justice Department had been so surprised to find a reasonably honest lawman that they’d been content to let him dress any old way he pleased. Now the department was filled with prissy pink dudes who looked like they sat down to piss, and they said a Deputy U.S. Marshal had to look “dignified.”
Longarm decided that the tie was as pretty as it was likely to get and sat his naked rump on the rumpled bed to wrestle On his britches. He pulled on a pair of tight, knit cotton longjohns before working his long legs into the brown tweed pants he’d bought one size too small.
like most experienced horsemen, Longarm wore neither belt nor suspenders to hold his pants up. He knew the dangers of a sweat-soaked fold of cloth or leather between a rider and his mount moving far or sudden. By the time he’d cursed the fly shut, the pants fit tight as a second skin around his upper thighs and lean hips.
He bent double and hauled on a pair of woolen socks before grunting and sliding his feet into his low- heeled cavalry stovepipes. Like the pants, the boots had been bought a size too small. Longarm had soaked them overnight and put them on wet to dry as they’d broken in, molding themselves to his feet. Like much of Longarm’s working gear, the low-heeled boots were a compromise. A lawman spent as much time afoot as he did in the saddle and he could run with surprising speed for a man his size in those too-tight boots.
In boots, pants, and shirt he rose once again to lift the gunbelt from the bedpost above his pillow. He slipped the supple cordovan leather belt around his waist, adjusting it to ride just above his hip. Like most men WhO might be called upon to draw either on foot or mounted with his legs apart, Longarm favored a cross-draw rig, worn high.
It hardly seemed likely that his gun had taken it upon itself to run low on ammunition overnight, but Longarm had attended too many funerals of careless men to take such things for granted. He reached across his buckle for the polished walnut grip and drew, hardly aware of the way his smooth, swift draw threw down lively on the blurred image in the mirror across the room.
He wasn’t aiming to shoot himself in the mirror. He wanted to inspect one of the tools of his trade. Longarm’s revolver was a double-action Colt Model T.44-40. The barrel was cut to five inches and the front sight had been filed off as useless scrap iron that could hang up in the open-toed holster of waxed and heat-hardened leather.
Swinging the gun over the rumpled bed, Longarm emptied the cylinder on the sheets, dry-fired a few times to test the action, and reloaded, holding each cartridge up to the gray window light before thumbing it home. Naturally, he only carried five rounds in the six chambers, allowing the firing pin to ride safely on an empty chamber. More than one old boy had been known to shoot his fool self in the foot jumping down off a bronc with a double- action gun packing one round too many.
Satisfied, Longarm put his sixgun to rest on his left hip and finished getting dressed. He put on a vest that matched his pants.
Those few who knew of his personal habits thought Longarm methodical to the point of fussiness. He considered it common sense to tally up each morning just what he was facing the day with. Before bedding down he’d spread the contents of his pockets across the top of the dresser. He made a mental note of each item as he started stuffing his pockets with a calculated place on his person for each and every one of them.
He counted out the loose change left from the night before, noting he’d spent damned near two whole dollars on dinner and drinks the night before. The depression of the ‘70s had bottomed out and business was
